In their latest update post, 343 Industries revealed that the Halo Infinite campaign co-op has been delayed once again, in addition to detailing their list of priorities for the future of the game. As the game moves into Season 2, the studio also revealed what’s coming with Halo Infinite, and just when can players expect these new modes to come.
As detailed in the latest post from Halo Waypoint, here is the current focus that 343 have for the game, in order:
- Addressing issues negatively impacting the player experience.
- Completing Season 2 and delivering it as promised on May 3rd.
- Continuing work on Campaign Co-Op, Forge, and Season 3.
343 then elaborated on these three, with the post detailing how they have since shipped important fixes for some of the game’s biggest issues:
Some of the issues on the Hotlist are gaps in the Halo Infinite experience that we only fully understood close to launch and were unable to address at an acceptable quality bar before ship. An example of this kind of “known” Hotlist issue is “Spartan Career” aka score-based player progression. Examples of “unknown” issues at launch were vulnerabilities in our anti-cheat system and problems with BTB matchmaking that we didn’t realize existed until we launched the game at scale.
Thus far, we have prioritized acute, unknown-before-ship issues that have a widespread negative impact on the shipped experience. Some items have been addressed and cleared from the Hotlist (e.g., BTB matchmaking), some have had partial improvements but need more work (e.g., anti-cheat), and others are in active development but not-yet-released (e.g., Spartan Career, Campaign Co-Op, and Forge). We are working on a public facing version of the Hotlist, similar to what the studio did during the Master Chief Collection updates, so that all of you will have a clear and constant window into the status of Hotlist issues as we work to address them.
As for plans for Season 2, the studio showed off some concept art for coming armor and other cosmetics in the game. You can check out a rundown of this below:
If you check your Season 1 Battle Pass, you will see that that Season 1 ends on May 2nd, and that’s because Season 2 will launch May 3rd. I’m very excited to announce the official name and theme for Season 2, which is… “Lone Wolves.”
By “theme” we mean a core idea that guides the creation of much, but not all, of a Season’s content. Lone Wolf Spartans are hunters. Trackers. They’re resourceful improvisers, operating deep in enemy territory without resupply or support. They’re fierce, rugged, and prefer to work alone—but they’re still loyal to the Spartan pack.
But like I said, not all Season content is directly linked to the theme, and a prime example of this is our free Fracture armor core for Season 2. Here’s a concept of that core, and we can’t wait to show you all the customization options for it—and for the free Lone Wolves armor core.
During Season 2, we will also be shipping playlist updates, balance changes, new modes, and maps, specifically, one Arena map named “Catalyst” and one BTB map named “Breaker.” The new modes include “Last Spartan Standing”, a free-for-all elimination mode, as well as another new mode named “Land Grab,” plus the return of an updated, all-time favorite mode, “King of the Hill.”
However, the most pertinent part of the update post is for the news on Campaign Co-Op and Forge mode, with the former delayed once again:
We’re making great progress on Campaign network co-op. And to be clear, this work has been occurring in parallel to Season 2 work, as has our work on Forge.
But the reality is that it’s going to take more time to land a high-quality, full-featured 4-player network co-op experience in the massive, wide-open world of Halo Infinite. We’re also committed to a great 2-player split-screen co-op experience on all Xbox consoles, from the original Xbox One through Xbox Series X—and the non-linear, wide-open sections of the Campaign present some big challenges for split-screen that have taken us more time to solve.
All this means that we will not be able to ship Campaign network co-op on May 3rd, at the start of Season 2. But we are still aiming to deliver Campaign network co-op later in Season 2, and we will share a release date for that and for split-screen co-op as soon as we can.
We are also making great progress on Forge. Indeed, we are already flighting Forge to a small group of community creators and working closely with them to ensure that all of you have a terrific experience creating, sharing, browsing, and playing Forge content. In the near term, we will continue to privately flight Forge as we develop it while also planning for public flight(s) later this year. We still have the goal of shipping Forge with Season 3.
There you have it. The studio has not revealed more details on when exactly into Season can players start expecting the arrival of Campaign Co-Op, and given that these Seasons can last a while, they may be in for another long wait.
In case you missed it, check out the latest patch notes for Halo Infinite here, which included the Season 1 Mid-Season updates.
Source: Halo Waypoint